Monday: Stacey made some wonderful bbq for the week!
Wednesday: Every Wednesday, I get to eat with my family and I love it so much!
Thursday: I did something that I’ve never done before… I made KimChi Jiggae! LOL It turned out pretty good!
Friday: Stacey and I went out for Pho at Than Brothers! Their cream puffs are legendary…
Friday: After work, I stopped by Famous Dave’s to grab a drink with my boy, James! I haven’t seen him in a while. It was a great time! Always great seeing my bro!
For dinner, we went to Lot No. 3. We ordered the Fish Sandwich and the Reuben. They were both delicious!
Saturday: We went to watch Cinderella on Saturday with the Hurlbut family! We love spending time with Uncle Howie, Auntie Nalyn, Aaron, and Audrey! I didn’t take any pictures, I forgot. Fail! LOL But Cinderella was AMAZING! Just take my money, Disney! Then we went to a Thai restaurant near by where Audrey ate all the Pad See Uw and Mango. LOL
I am a fan of Lily James now.
Sunday: My dad’s birthday is the following Tuesday, but we celebrated it on Sunday! It was a special birthday and I love seeing them smile. haha My mom made amazing food! Stacey baked an amazing cake! Toasted Pecans FTW!
My dad’s birthday also means the anniversary of my blog. It’s the 2 year anniversary. Wow. Thanks to anyone who reads these things. It’s not the best blog. It’s just a little insight into my life. My mom told me to keep a diary when I was 10 years old. I tried for 2 weeks and failed. Well, I made it to 2 years, mom. I’m going to continue!
Speaking of my mom. She got into a bad accident this week. But miraculously, the driver’s seat was untouched. So thankful that nothing happened to her. A car can be replaced, she cannot be replaced.
Hope everyone had a great weekend! Have a great week, everyone!
Story flow is a nebulous subject that’s oft times discussed in terms that are far too strict or far too broad for an aspiring writer to get anything out of the conversation. A fact that isn’t too surprising given that are very few inherently wrong ways to tell a story and, therefore, almost no hard rules related to the topics of pacing and flow. In spite of that, let’s see if I can write a semi-cohesive piece on the topic that will serve as something of a reference guide for those of you who struggle to decide how much information is too much or how much is too little.
First things first, every word in your story is a piece of information. Some of that information will serve to advance the plot, some of that information will serve to develop your characters or you world, and some of that information will be there for no reason other than to make your readers laugh. The only thing that is always true about every piece of information in your story is that, for you to let it be in your story, there must be a reason why it is there.
The real challenge, though, is deciding what qualifies as a good reason.
Well, I could start trying to list what I consider good reasons, but that’s not very helpful so let’s do something a little different. Let’s look at a story you all know, Cinderella, and break down how you decide what you must have in the story.
To start, let’s just talk about the plot. What is the logical progression of events necessary to tell Cinderella?
Event 1: One of Cinderella’s parents dies
Event 2: The other parent remarries a person with two children
Event 3: Cinderella’s other parent dies
Event 4: Step-parent and step-siblings treat Cinderella cruelly and make Cinderella into a servant
Event 5: Announcement comes that the king is holding a ball to find his child a wife
Event 6: Step-family goes to the ball and leave Cinderella behind
Event 7: Fairy-godmother shows up and sends Cinderella to the ball
Event 8: Royal heir meets Cinderella
Event 9: Royal heir and Cinderella fall in love
Event 10: Clock strikes 12 and Cinderella runs away
Event 11: Royal heir searches the kingdom for Cinderella
Event 12: Step-parent locks Cinderella away
Event 13: Cinderella rescued
Event 14: Cinderella reveled as mysterious stranger from the ball
Event 15: Royal heir and Cinderella get married
Alright, I’ve now written Cinderella. Admittedly this version is rather boring and no critic is going to sing its praises, but no one can say that I failed to tell you exactly what happens in the traditional Cinderella story. So, now that we have our series of events, we need to make those events have some emotional pull by adding character development and/or world building. We also need to make sure that the events make sense by ensuring that we’ve written characters who would do the things we’ve said they will.
We could go through every character, but this is just an example so for now we’re only going to pick one: the step-parent. We want the audience to view this character as evil and we also need to set up that this is a person who would turn Cinderella into a servant and keep Cinderella from going to the ball, but we also want to audience to feel like the step-parent is evil for a reason. That reason could be mental instability, but let’s go with the more traditional choice of having the step-parent hate Cinderella because Cinderella’s parent loved Cinderella more. We can also add the extra drama of the fact that Cinderella is prettier and more intelligent than the step-parent’s children.
We could do all this by adding extra events to the sequence or we could just develop the events we already have. Both are fine options and we’re going to do both in this example. First we’re going to add a new event between event 2 and event 3 in which we see Cinderella’s living parent show clear favoritism to Cinderella over the step-parent. Let’s also add a little drama to event 3.
Event 1: One of Cinderella’s parents dies
Event 2: The other parent remarries a person with two children
Event 2B: Step-parent overhears Cinderella being told that her parent loves Cinderella more than step-parent
Event 3: Cinderella’s other parent dies while calling out for Cinderella and not step-parent
Okay, now we have a sequence of events that both move the story forward and establish why the step-parent hates Cinderella.
At this point I can’t take you much farther because the next step is to turn this list of events into full scenes and the way that you choose to write your scenes is entirely dependent on your writing style. I can, however, continue to walk you through this example. I can show you how to add bits and pieces to the story so that you have a reasonable number of scenes (because each event should only be one or two scenes and some events will take place in the same scene) while still developing your characters into emotional powerhouses that make people love or hate them.
I’m not going to do that, though, because I’ve already been at this for a while and I’ve got no idea if this is useful. If it is, let me know! I’d be more than happy to do this for any fairytale out there. I could even do it for a well-known novel or movie, just send me a message asking me to do an event breakdown of whatever story you want to see broken down and I’ll give it a go. However, please keep it to stories that most people would know as I want my posts to be useful to as many people as possible.
If we really think, Cinderella was right, what is a dream if not a wish? I know that sometimes it’s not, but oh dear gods, I know when my mind is silent enough for my heart to speak freely, and when I dream of a wish, I know that you hear it.
![Mind Map #36: [All the Pumpkin things]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mco6wuRo9F1ru4tgjo1_1280.jpg "Mind Map #36: [All the Pumpkin things]")
